Remember what it was like to move to the edge of your seat, with your bottom barely attached to your child-sized chair? Your arm waving wildly and your mouth moving even faster to get your teacher’s attention?

Remember what it was like to want to be picked first, even when you didn’t know the answer?

Remember when you did get picked first and you didn’t have the answer? You’d put your little hand down for a red-hot second before it shot back up in the air with re-energized pleas for the teacher to pick you even though you still didn’t know the answer.

Remember what it was like to go first? There was no hesitancy. Just the pure, unbridled thrill of jumping-in.

At some point that incredible thrill of jumping-in begins to wane and sometimes even wax. Our bottoms become a little more glued to our adult-sized chairs. We begin to question whether our idea or our response is the right one. We begin to worry that if we jump-in it will be with a belly flop and not the perfectly timed flying forward one-and-a-half somersaults pike off the high dive (and it’s extra tragic to think about belly flopping wearing an out-of-season suit that you found on the triple mark-down clearance rack three seasons ago!).

Here’s what I know. Going first takes guts. Going first takes courage. Going first takes willingness to belly flop over and over and over. Going first takes the belief that in every thrilling belly flop lives the perfectly timed flying forward one-and-a-half somersaults pike off the high dive.

Who better to go first than perfectly, perfect you? Jump in!

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